I’m kinda afraid to get invested in this show because I feel they’re going to end up on Raw two years from now jobbing to The Miz in the third match of the night without an entrance. But if you say its this good I’ll give it a go.

Serious question:
Triple H seems to get a Worst here for simply existing. I know he has a lot of strikes against him, but if he is indeed responsible for stuff like building up the tag team division or steering developmental toward all the stuff you love, can he do enough to redeem himself and be judged objectively on a case-by-case basis?

Well yeah, but in addition to objective commentary, the column is jokes. So the joke is that I’m a wrestling nerd who automatically thinks the worst. If he’s responsible for even 1% of this developmental talent crew he’s Bested more than I can say.

Jokes aside, what puts him into perma-Worst status for me is that he is compelled to inject himself into EVERYTHING. Oh, Daniel Bryan is getting massively over with the crowd organically all by himself? Here comes Triple H to talk about how great Daniel Bryan is.

I probably have a slightly higher opinion of HHH’s career as a performer than Brandon does – yes, the fact that he had the right friends/married the right person have a lot to do with his status in the WWE, but a lot of guys have the right friends and sleep with the right people and can’t take advantage of those opportunities the way he did. His work as a heel was pretty damn good, and he can deliver a good match pretty consistently when he’s motivated to do so. What irks me to no end is that he’s abandoned the one thing he was really and truly great at (being a heel that everybody HATED) in his semi-retirement to bask in the glow of his “legendary” status. The problem is that his on-screen persona, even when he’s trying to be a good guy, is so smarmy and obnoxious that I reflexively want to dislike anything and anyone he’s associated with.

I hate to get into this (or invoke Bill Simmons) but I differentiate between HHH the character/wrestler and Paul Levesque the behind the scenes guy. I love Paul Levesque! He seems to enjoy the same concepts and performers that I do and has a take that I’m largely enjoying. HHH, the character/wrestler, irritates the hell out of me. I also have a higher opinion of HHH than Brandon (Stephanie or no, HHH earned his top spot) but it’s mercurial. Every time HHH comes back and makes himself a Marty Stu I like him less.

when I was 13 years old (5 years ago) and couldn’t watch wwe (or any other wrestling) because they didn’t air here in the middle east, and all I had was only youtube to watch the attitude era videos, triple H was one of my top 5 favourite wrestlers !!!!!

he got like million hardcore and ladder and cage matches full of bloody moments and shit from the past !

also, my very first full-fued experience that I watched on youtube (even before I even started watching RAW !) was that road to wrestlemania 17 story between him and taker, and it was vicious and very heelish and it was all just awesome to me back then !

it’s weird how much f*ckin’ mad I get when I see/hear him and/or his theme music now … but I still relize that he has done very much good behind the scenes (I’ve never enjoyed raw or the all of wwe’s shows actully as much as I do today !) and I can differentate between the hhh we get on TV and paul who’s running things behind.

Now I won’t say Trish Stratus was the end all be all for women’s wrestling, but her run wasn’t shitty. If we are comparing her to women outside of the WWE, like Sara Del Rey, yes she sucked, but in WWE she helped make divas matches actual matches. Before that, it was mostly shit, but Trish, Victoria, Lita and Mickie James really helped elevate the WWE women’s division. Also, I give Trish credit for getting better. Again, she wasn’t great, but she did improved and seemed to care about putting on a decent match. I think she deserves some credit for bringing credibility to WWE women’s wrestling, but I would not confuse her for a Shimmer wrestler, maybe a GLOW wrestler.

Trish tried hard and looked great. Almost every match she ever had was bad, though. Jazz was great, and so was Mickie James, but watch Trish try to execute her finish (or help someone execute her finish ON her). It’s almost always bad. Alundra Blayze, Bull Nakano etc. brought credibility to WWE women’s wrestling. The Trish archetype is what took it away.

I was talking more about the lull in the attitude era. When all we got were bra and panties “matches”. The 80’s had great stuff, but Sable being a WWE women’s champion was more offensive than Trish. Trish’s stuff never looked great, but she worked hard. I guess if we looked through rose colored glasses and called Trish the best ever, I’d agree with you that that’s stupid. she wasn’t horrible, not a great defense of her, but it’s the defense she earned.

I remember, there was a point where that was all we would get. Again, I enjoy what they are doing on NXT, I love when women are given a chance to wrestle. I just don’t agree that Trish was the worst. Also, Jazz was great. Sorry I forgot about her.

Trish almost suffers from John Cena syndrome by her critics. Like Cena, she could never have a good match. It’s always the other opponent who carries the match. But at some point, when you have so many good to great matches with various opponents, maybe she had a role in those matches afterall?

About 3 weeks ago, I went ahead and watched all of Trish’s important matches from her first Woman’s Championship win to her retirement. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of the matches she was in and liked many of her storylines (She’s All That starring her, Jericho, and Christian; Psycho Lesbian Mickie James; her rivalries with T.a.T.u. Victoria and Jazz) I still think she wasn’t much in the ring.

She’s not suffering John Cena syndrome. She did have to be carried in her matches. The exception being her famous matches with Lita, which are so rose-colored I can barely believe it. It’s too bad such sub-par matches (even for the Woman’s division (sad, but there have been models and such stinking up the joint from the Attitude Era to today)) have such a revered place in history.

oh, come on, man … no one argues with brandon more than me (especially whenever it’s involving TNA which I’m a big fan of while he doesn’t stand it). but I’d never accuse him of believing his opinions to be facts or never accepting the other’s opinions and feelings.

I can’t comment on trish’s career as I wasn’t there to watch it (I was still young and didn’t know about wrestling) .. but that RVD-jericho so called solid match really felt like the worst and slowest and most awkward match to me, too. and I can totally understand brandon’s feeling on it.

brandon got similar thoughts to me, I think. as I, also, am feeling pretty weird now that daniel bryan is getting praised by everyone just now but am still happy for him.

I really cannot understand why is it that there are so many people who think they’re dead right that Y2J – RVD was an objectively good match and it’s the minority who simply has to say “well, I guess it was good, but I just didn’t like for some personal reasons” lest they get lynched via the comment section or whatever, when it’s plain obvious that the only ones who enjoyed that match are the ones who look at it from a nostalgic viewpoint, and there are obviously a lot of people like that since, after all, both guys were major hits in their primes… which was over a decade ago. Sure, Y2J has managed to stay at least somewhat in shape and reinvent himself a few years ago (which was awesome), and when he comes back in recent years, most of what he does includes putting young talent over.

But the fact that these are guys who went out of their primes years ago, and that RVD is obviously even more out of shape than Jericho, who certainly can’t go as he could years ago, no matter how well he tried to keep himself, made that match something that would not deserve the huge praise it got from pretty much everyone from the start. Sure, I was willing to give it a chance, and was hoping for it to pleasantly surprise me, but nothing really did except for the Frogsplash, which was definitely close to being 5 stars. Otherwise, RVD was late to dodge the Lionsault once, he had a awful looking mishap where he was supposed to counter getting thrown in the corner by Jericho, but just slipped down on his neck, and the overall pace of the match was just sluggish. I know that they added some time to it because the Bryan – Barrett match was scrapped, but even then, maybe wrestlers as experienced as them should know how to work around it and not just make it look like they’re catching breath after every signature move, and repeating the process until the end. I don’t even hate RVD like Brandon does, and I actually like his run so far besides that match, because the rest of them was just a jobber being fed to him in 5 minutes where he has just enough time to hit his signature moves and be done with it. Not 20 minutes with a guy who’s also too old to carry the match to being as good as many people perceive it to be.

For the record, I present opinions as fact because they’re my opinions. They’re what I think or believe. I am not the Controller of Facts. If you read what I thought about something, it is my opinion 100% of the time. I am just not interested in peppering every sentence in an obvious opinion piece with THIS IS MY OPINION.

It works so damn well because Sheamus actually falls in the direction a person would fall when clubbered from the angle he received murder from. It sounds like such a simple thing, but in practice it doesn’t always turn out that way. The little things, man.

That Tyler Breeze, so hot right now.* Seriously, almost everything about this guy is amazing. He does a walk on the runway, takes a billion selfies, has mastered Blue Steel. I’m playing his theme (Good Dirty Fun) on listenonrepeat. NXT Champ now!

As for Paige and Emma, while I think it was a good match and appreciate what they did, I honestly thought it was too sloppy to contend with some of the other good women’s matches I’ve seen this year (Kaitlyn vs anybody (-Tamina) for the Divas title, Paige and Emma’s matches vs. Summer Rae). Those elbows from Paige looked as bad as those slaps from the Botchamania entrance especially. Though Paige and Emma’s submissions are sick.

weird .. for me, personally, that kaitlyn/tamina match (or any of kaitlyn’s matches) is nothing special ever (except for that one match against eve when she won the title and her match against AJ at payback when she lost it … and even those I only loved because her opponet was so good that she elevated her work standard to theirs !)

emma vs paige here (not only because of the much better backstory, crowd, annoncers and just the whole delightful feeling of the full sails arena) was my favourite women’s match in wwe in years !

You have me mistaken on Kaitlyn vs Tamina. The – sign is supposed to exempt that match from my set. That one stunk. Every other time Kaitlyn has fought for the Divas title or defended it has been a good match and I feel Kaitlyn rose to the challenge. We agree on vs Eve on 1/14/13 RAW and vs AJ at Payback. Would you mind telling me what you didn’t like about their MITB match? Also, have you seen Kaitlyn’s title defenses vs. Natalya and vs AJ on NXT? I liked those matches as well.

As for Emma and Paige, I liked the match and I certainly agree about how much better the announcing and atmosphere* is at Full Sail. I just can’t get over that I thought they were a bit slow and sloppy and it took me out of it. I liked it, but it didn’t feel as monumental as say Seth Rollins or Big E.’s wins for the NXT title.

*going to have to disagree a bit on the backstory though. vs Eve and vs AJ built upon long going storylines with those women and Kaitlyn. You at least given a reason to care if Kaitlyn won or lost. I like the story for Emma and Paige as “who’s the best”, but not as much as conniving Eve or broken friendship AJ.

yeah, I agree with you on kaitlyn being much better, it’s just that ,for me, she didn’t get to show that throughout her 5 months reign as a champion except in front of eve and AJ who outshined her, too …

I didn’t see those 2 matches you talked about on NXT :( I’m still rewatching all that I’ve missed from NXT.

in their MITB match, all I could remember and think about throughout the whole match was how much of a (and forgive me for using the word) b*tch kaitlyn has acted against AJ for no reason since she lost the title … while AJ’s acts looked like nothing more than childlish jokes and failing attempts at grabbing kaitlyn’s attention, kaitlyn’s acts (like all the really bad things she siad about AJ when she pretended she was her on smackdown, all the shouting and slut-shaming she said to AJ during their contract signing segment or the million spears and attacks from behind and cheap shots to AJ everywhere since before wrestlemania and all the way until now !) were just plain out rude and unbearable for me … for me, kaitlyn had a worse character than even triple h when it comes to her fued with AJ ! and that wasn’t the focus before AJ won the title at payback so I overlooked it, but after that, things kept getting worse and worse. and all this about AJ tricking her into the false secret admirer story didn’t look even near anything to cry about for me ! or even how she lost the title that she didn’t even get to brag about and show how much she’s proud of except for that one night she won it only .. it didn’t make AJ look evil for me ! it didn’t make her deserve punishment and slut-shaming from everyone that she still gets until today !

Kaitlyn didn’t get to feel as much of a Champion as she should’ve (winning from Eve in her home state was such a hot start) because of classic booking forgetting about her due to the Road to Wrestlemania. I don’t blame you for not initially feeling her since it was the NXT defenses (vs Natalya before Wrestlemania and vs AJ afterwards) that kept her alive and gave her some prestige in my mind.

Eh, the thing about the gagillion spears that Kaitlyn does to AJ is that AJ always provokes her into doing them. AJ’s an obsessive, mean person who constantly pokes at Kaitlyn for all her (AJ’s) failures with men, taking them out on her. All Kaitlyn ever did was try to support her friend, and when her friend lashed out on her for that, protect herself. I don’t know how you see AJ making Kaitlyn believe a man loved her secretly and then taking that away and calling her trash or dressing in a muscle suit and calling her mannish-looking as harmless and then Kaitlyn hurting AJ as unjustified. AJ deserved everything Kaitlyn did to her* (and Kaitlyn nothing AJ did to her).

*except for the slut-shaming, though I’m willing to give that a pass since AJ already took it to a cheap place with body-shaming Kaitlyn (which she continues to do), Kaitlyn only did it once (and was clearly screwing with AJ in the way she knew would dig at her best), and since it’s more a problem with WWE as a whole (as great as Eve’s heel character was, the fact that it started with John Cena slut-shaming her is fucking awful)

I agree with you after all .. I forgot about the “you’re trash” thing …

but I still don’t think that, in wrestling, if a heel provokes you and makes fun of you, that you as a face can counter that by attacking them 100 times (and sometimes it was cheap shots !) OUTSIDE matches.

the thing is, for this story to make me understand kaitlyn’s feelings and rally behind her against the evil friend that abandoned her, it had to have AJ keeping kaitlyn’s numbers and always running away from her (like eve’s storyline with kaitlyn ! which was much better !) and then for kaitlyn to FINALLY get her hands on AJ just IN THE RING IN AN OFFICIAL MATCH ! and THEN it would be like brandon said once when he said that the storyline should be about kaitlyn getting revenge and winning not AJ shaming her and then winning the title from her !

also, the reason I didn’t like that secret admirer story was how unrealistic it was from wwe to try and make us believe that such a hot, cool, talented and passionate woman like kaitlyn doesn’t have anyone that loves her in real life and is very desperate for love that she’ll go after someone that she doesn’t even know in such a crazy way O_o

The secret admirer story worked for me because its basis was AJ and Kaitlyn’s close friendship (before AJ went all cray for DBry). The reason why Kaitlyn fell for the admirer so hard is because AJ created an unbelievably perfect guy for her (because she knows her so well). In wrestling, you’re supposed to believe the relationships presented as the only ones that exists. Thus, Cody Rhodes can be engaged in real life (to his extremely hot fiancee) but have been flirting with Kaitlyn at the same time on the show. Whether Celeste Bonin is dating a guy or would have many suitors doesn’t matter, because Kaitlyn isn’t/doesn’t. Thus, having Kaitlyn fall for a guy via text message, then having the reveal of it being AJ messing with her is perfectly believable and heartbreaking for Kaitlyn.

AJ and Kaitlyn’s ongoing feud has mostly been done well with everyone in proper alignment. In wrestling, it’s perfectly acceptable to react with violence, because that’s what we pay to see. The problem is that normally heels don’t do anything really wrong and babyfaces attack with little provocation (Sandow and Sheamus’ feud is a perfect example). With AJ and Kaitlyn, that was one of the few times it’s been done well. Yes, Kaitlyn has attacked AJ outside of matches, but AJ’s always asking for it (Eve did everything to avoid matches with Kaitlyn (paying Aksana to attack her backstage, slapping her to cost her a battle royale) because she knew Kaitlyn could beat her). She only comes out to shit-talk Kaitlyn or try to distract her from winning her matches. She’s a bad person, so it’s acceptable for Kaitlyn to drive herself into AJ’s gut as payback (because this is wrestling and that’s how they talk).

The reason the secret admirer story works is because its based on Kaitlyn and AJ’s formerly close friendship. Kaitlyn fell in love with this guy over texts because he seemed impossibly perfect for her, and he was that because AJ knows everything about her. In real life I’m sure Celeste Bonin has many suitors, but Kaitlyn only has who we’re presented (for example, she and Cody had that romance a few months ago, even though in real life he’s engaged to his incredibly hot fiancee). That in mind, it’s totally believable that Kaitlyn would fall for this guy and heartbreaking when he turns out to be a mean trick.

When it comes to the attacks by Kaitlyn to AJ, the thing about wrestling is that hurting your opponent is a perfectly valid way to communicate with them. The problem with WWE is that most of the time when a face attacks a heel or vice-versa is that the face is childish and unjustified while the heel has understandable motivation and is bullied. With AJ and Kaitlyn, they’ve mostly done a good job of having the alignments correct. AJ is bad person, often shit-talking Kaitlyn or trying to distract her during matches, thus Kaitlyn is often justified to attack her outside of matches (she’s never just looked for her backstage and attacked her. AJ says or does something mean, then Kaitlyn attacks). It’s pro-wrestling, we pay for people fighting each other. It just has to be understandable and justified like Kaitlyn and AJ are to be acceptable/good.

even the kaitlyn character had many loves on screen (and on the internet shows).

but you’re explanation of it makes me think of it in a better way now. because, just like you, I loved it for the sole reason of the backstory with AJ and kaitlyn’s broken friendship before AJ went crazy for bryan !

however, I still don’t like that kaitlyn attacked AJ a lot outside of the matches and I can’t accept “it’s wrestling and they do that all the time !” as an explanation …

when sheamus does it, we hate it (deservingly). so why should we accept it with kaitlyn ?

also, before AJ even provoked kaitlyn, kaitlyn was the one to first talk trash about AJ behind her back (in that backstage segment with kane and bryan). and on extreme rules, AJ was walking alone minding her own buisness when kaityln decided to try and make fun of her for no reason and then attacked her from behind even though she was the one that started it !

however, I’m willing to forget the bad moments of the past .. and I’d like to think about the future. who do you think is going to face AJ next for the title ? kaitlyn shouldn’t have any more rematches after tapping out clean twice !

I’m thinking Kaitlyn has a few more shots left before she’s put on stopgap. A major problem with the Divas at the moment is that few of them are credible contenders. Kaitlyn, AJ, Layla, and Natalya* are the only believable women to vie for the main title, and when you thrust one of the others up, you have to give some reason why Kaitlyn doesn’t have or want another shot.

I’m guessing that Kaitlyn and Dolph team against Big E. and AJ at SummerSlam (Kaitlyn pins AJ to give her a win over the Champion, Dolph gets to beat Big E. in a match without pinning him and having E. lose heat (WWE logic)), Kaitlyn overcomes odds and beats AJ for the title at Night of Champions, defends it Triple Threat then Fatal-Four Way at Hell In A Cell then Survivor series (thus bringing in Layla and Natalya into the fold without having to justify personal history with The ChickBusters), and loses it back to AJ at TLC in a surprise ladder match (involving all four women). This is enough time to justify new contenders for the Divas Championship, gets them a cool gimmick match to raise the division’s stock (ladder match!), and allows AJ (one of the most popular people in the company) to go to Wrestlemania (and probably retain) as Champion.

*Naomi could be a possible contender, but she’s still green and the Funkadactyl gimmick must be dropped for her to be taken seriously

I took the plunge about two months ago and bought Hulu+. Not only can I get Parks and Rec from this season, but I don’t get Ion, so I get to watch Main Event and even WWECW (the shoot greatest show ever!) But I have also spent the last few weeks watching all the episodes I’ve missed.

What I like best about this show is it makes me care. Sure, I have my favorites on Raw, but I don’t really react anymore outside of The Shield, Mark Henry, and Daniel Bryan. I was actually pulling for my guys and doing the “nononononononono” thing during near falls on them and counting along when they had near falls. Hulu commercial over, but for real if you havent; go get it.

(Incidentally, Corey Graves is a million times more tolerable as a bratty punk heel than he is right now. I dont get how Bo Dallas is so hated, but everyone leaves babyface Graves relatively alone.)

Corey Graves is lame, but innocuous. People are going to barely remember that he’s 1/2 of the tag team champions with PAC (who is The NXT Tag-Team Champions). Bo Dallas is lame and shoved into wins against guys who we like way better than him. He’s John Cena minus the charisma and occasional in-ring brilliance.

Corey is also, at least, a character, and stays in character. The way Bo just keeps smiling, even when he’s trying to be serious (like the Big E contract signing) is just infuriating. The dude has no sense of acting what so ever. He’s not a character, he’s just some smiley dude who keeps getting wins over “impossible odds” with the lamest finisher in WWE/NXT.

Bo Dallas is the most nothing guy ever. His personality is stupid, all his offense looks like it happens by accident, his finisher sucks and he does it poorly, his build is “my stepdad with his shirt off,” and he’s terrible I the mic. Just awful all-around.

Food for thought: I wonder if one of HHH and Stephanie’s daughters got involved in wrestling if it would change the way they book/present the women’s division (I hate calling it the Divas or Knockouts)?

The optimist in me has this image of HHH being a little disappointed that he didn’t have a son to be a pro wrestler and “carry on his legacy” and then he realized his daughter could do that by becoming the greatest women’s wrestler of all time. Which is admittedly weird considering none of the kids is old enough to be part of the WWE’s demographic.

I’ve said it before: I think one of HHH’s daughters will be the first woman to hold the WWE championship.

Enough years will have gone by, once any of his girls are wrestling age,that women wrestling men will become more and more acceptable to the mainstream. HHH definitely seems like the type to try to recapture his “legacy” through his child. At least one of the three girls is almost certainly going to be a wrestler, having grown up with and in the business on both sides of the family. And whoever she is she’ll have some instant credibility with the fans since she’s the daughter of HHH.

All of those factors lead me to believe that it’ll happen eventually, and one of those girls will be the first.

Bo Dallas and Corey Graves represent the worst aspects of archetypical main eventer and indy stylo respectively. Bo Dallas is a good looking, well-built, third generation wrestler who has never been seasoned outside of the WWE style and is boring as hell, think Randy Orton. Corey Graves is a guy who has one thing (knuckle tattoos!) and nothing else.

I honestly couldn’t believe it when I found out that Graves was Sterling James Keenan. I had no clue why WWE would sign him to begin with. He was never particularly over on the indies. As a matter of fact, he was part of the single-worst match I ever witnessed live at an ROH show. It was an absolute church fart against Jimmy Rave (who I actually liked). Just awful.

When my girlfriend saw a still picture of Bo on the show this week, she said “that guy looks kind of like Leonardo Dicaprio”. I rolled my eyes as hard as they would roll and tried to start explaining why he’s the goddamn worst, but I decided to let her see for herself next week.

Wait, so Brandon loves Tyler Breeze and Conor O’Brian, admits he needs a 1 note, 2D gimmick right about now from people who just live and breathe their gimmick, and yet he can’t stand Xavier Woods? The one guy whose gimmick we all sort of assumed Brandon would love?

I’d also say it’s because ENOUGH with the dancing gimmicks. My dad was vaguely watching the other day while surfing the net and his reaction was that every time he looked up, someone was dancing. Seriously, enough with it

Xavier Woods doesn’t really have a gimmick or character. He has a set of attributes (90’s stuff, dancing). Tyler Breeze is a 2D character and fully formed within those 2 dimensions. I could imagine interacting with Tyler Breeze outside of the wrestling ring and still have him be Tyler Breeze. Xavier Woods is barely able to exist within a Nickelodeon bumper.

“I think the Trish Stratus stuff people look back on with a rosy filter is almost entirely garbage.”

While I concede her stuff from 1999-mid 2002 is less than stellar, most of her stuff onwards was very good. She had legit ‘match of the night’ with people like Victoria and Mickie James. She even got a few very good matches with Lita. (Now THAT’s a career that was garbage but looked through rose colored glasses.)

brad maddox commntary along with the simple, small old-school wrestling arenas and crowds feeling that the full sails arena and corwd gives me are probably the top 2 reasons I think NXT is my favourite thing ever.

The women’s match was the most I’ve ever seen my girlfriend get into wrestling, and I’ve been watching it around her for over ten years. She really can’t stand how overproduced Raw is, but she really likes NXT and says it reminds her of how it was when she was a kid. Can’t say I disagree, really. Why does Raw have to be all fireworks and shitty nu metal songs and flashing graphics and garbage? What’s wrong with just having a wrestling show be a wrestling show? Brandon mentioned it when they did the Retro Raw a while back, the entire presentation of the product back then was vastly superior in every way to what we get these days, in my opinion.

I agree. I can’t goddamn stand the “action cam” camera work they’ve got going on Raw. Why do you need to zoom in on the left shoulder of somebody getting slammed? Just sit there and show them getting slammed! That’s what we’re here to see!

I get what you guys are saying, but you realize the overly-kinetic camera work is to hide how much (or how little) impact there is on certain moves, right? I mean, if you cut to a reverse angle at the moment of impact on a Brogue kick, it allows you to imagine that it connected better than it might have.

That being said, the crazy camera work they use for Shield matches, to make them look frenzied, or whatever, is just too much.

actually, I don’t have that much of a big problem with the camera angles and close ups on moves. my problem is with the crazy graphics and lights and fireworks and shit all the damn time !!! and the colorful bright looking arenas when RAW is on !

The NXT women’s division is in a weird space in my head where I can allow myself to compare it to the main roster and go “fuck yeah, why isn’t this shit on RAW”, but I have to very, very careful not to think about all the mid-90s Joshi I’ve been watching lately and go “why is nobody even close to Manami Toyota’s level anymore?”

I thought for sure Poochie was going to pedigree Paige and then do the crotch X.
Why do all the divas dress like they are appearing on the Bachelor backstage? No one’s wearing sweatpants and t-shirt when they are off?

The womens final looked a bit less sharp tha expected, Could be because this was at the end of a series of shows being filmed maybe? The other women was obviously dressed to celebrate, and I think HHH works better than Steph as the authority figure handing over the belt to the inaugural womens champion. (Even though Steph opened the tournament.)

Btw, I think I read in some interview a while back that HHH wouldn’t mind if any of his daughters choose to walk in his footsteps, but that he doesn’t want to force it on them either.

And the Colter/Cesaro-promo was hilarious. No wonder the search on “Sami Zayn” came up blank…

That’d be sad if true about Emma/Paige being tired from a day of filming. The Woman’s Championship tournament was a great idea and that’s such a pointless way to ruin the end match, which should be the best one. I kinda hope it is true though, if only to justify my feelings on the match being less excited than everyone elses.

Forgot to add earlier, am I the only one who thinks that the actual reason why Bray seemed so happy after Harper lost and then proceeded to look at Sheamus with more serious eyes was because he had plans for making him “follow the buzzards” too? I just got a feeling as if he liked the brutality Fella can dish out/take, and realized, “hmmm, if I can make him grow a full beard, then there might be hope for him” or something like that. Besides, Sheamus isn’t really doing anything nowadays besides having random good matches and hitting on Renee Young in backstage segments on Smackdown.

All the bests in the world for the Emma vs Paige match. It’s everything what women’s wrestling should be every Monday Night. In an hour show, the segment essentially lasted 25 minutes and had multiple this is awesome chants. Just incredible. I wish nothing but the best for these two and hopefully they will be on Raw sooner than later. I wonder what HHH must’ve been thinking hearing those chants and seeing such a great women’s match? It’s hard to believe Paige is just 20.

Brad Maddox just kills it on color commentary. Lawler should take notes.

Sheamus totally needs a mouth piece of Raw. When he just goes out there and fight he’s way more enjoyable. Maybe he should be a regular Heyman guy?

Everything that’s already been said about the Emma/Paige and Sheamus/Luke Harper match is accurate, but I feel like the Ascension deserve some love.

I know they got a Best, but this was my first exposure to this iteration of the team and I thought that they looked great. They just old school wrecked the fuck out of Aiden English (who really does look like a 1920s boxer, which is excellent in its own right) and looked incredibly crisp and polished while they did it. Good stuff. Plus, you gotta love guys that will fully commit themselves to such an over-the-top gimmick.

Not exaggerating at all, but the Emma v Paige might have been the best WWE Diva’s match since Lita v Trish.

I LOVED how into it the crowd was. THIS is how you are supposed to do Diva’s. If you let them entertain on their, sink or swim. . . if you let them show what they can do instead of a 2 minute match with a roll-up. . .if you let them have something, ANYTHING, going on other than just being bitchy to each other the audience will go for it.

Emma and Paige are more over in the NXT arena than any Diva not named AJ.

Does anyone else think Emma’s gimmick was better as a heel? I still love her and everything but I found her much more entertaining when she was stumbling around and messing up her entrance etc. Happy girl dancing with kids in the ring is a little too close to Funkasaurus levels on the dancing gimmick scale.

Not in the least. She actually looks like she’s truly having fun doing it. As a heel that would just be weird and wrong. And thanks to her I can say fuck Funkasaurus dancing, Fuck Fandango-ing, THIS is the dancing entrance stuff I need.

Well she used to try heeling it up by doing the dance with a sneer on her face and putting her fingers in her ears when her opponents music hit and stuff like that. I thought it was pretty funny. But yeah she obviously couldn’t make people hate her because they started cheering eventually and here we are!